by Varsha Ravi
And then the hand dropped away, and he stepped backward. Suri forced herself to turn away, to focus on the blossoms of the garden and the smooth, cold warmth of the sun. She began to walk away, and though she felt strained and careworn, she did not look back.
18
Lyne
The next morning, Suri lay in bed, bleary eyed and mortified. Memories swirled in her mind, and, overwhelmed, she turned to the side, curling into a ball. Her alarm clock informed her it was nearing noon—she had lost half the day to this.
She showered and dressed quickly, and hesitated behind her shut bedroom door. Everything about this was unbearable and exaggerated; she felt like a child, cracking open her door and peering out into the hallway. Eventually, she drew in a breath sharply and shut the door behind her, keeping her gaze ahead. It’ll be like ripping off a Band-aid, she thought. If you don’t focus on the blood, it won’t even hurt.
The living room was heavy with the pungent, smothering scent of jaggery and clarified butter. Kiran stuck his head out of the kitchenette, fingers glistening and loosely interlaced. He’d tied his hair up in a stubby knot, and bright pink barrettes pinned pieces away from his face. He stared at the floor, skin flushed from the heat.
“I’m going to go out,” she told him, staring past him at the wall. Her face felt hot for no good reason. “To the library. I have a project. Group project, it’s due Monday. We’re very far behind.”
“Okay,” he said softly. There was a streak of gram flour on his cheek, wide and sweeping. He didn’t seem to find it important, even though Suri could not stop staring at it.
“Okay,” she repeated, steadying her voice, then turned on her heel and left. She tried to focus on the beat of her boots against cement, the clatter of voices in the crowded streets around her, but the sounds slipped through her, fluid and disinterested.
She went to the library. For hours, they worked on the PowerPoint, spoke to each other, wrote things down. When the doors shut behind her, the cold winter air buoying her slightly, she could remember nothing of what they had done. And yet, in a cruel turn of fate, she could still remember his smile.
When she returned to the apartment, it wasn’t as humid, but the smell of jaggery and clarified butter hadn’t entirely faded. It stuck to the air, sweet and heady and comforting, the scent of afternoons she’d spent in the back-room kitchen, watching her grandmother form sweets with worn palms. Kiran ducked out of the kitchen, brisk until he noticed her. There were plates of sweets balanced in his arms, and he held one in his mouth, stretching his lips out into an O.
Carefully, he placed the plates on the coffee table, taking a delicate bite from the sweet in his mouth before drawing it away. For a single, dizzying moment, she thought he might give it to her, but then he took a seat on the edge of the couch—to the side, making room for her—and nodded toward the plates. “If you want one.”
She took a seat beside him, reached forward for a thick square, and bit into it tentatively. Almost involuntarily, she let out a low moan and stared over at him in wonder.
“What?” he asked self-consciously, a flush high on his cheeks. “Is it bad?”
“’Is it bad?’” she repeated, incredulous. She felt boneless. “Even my grandmother doesn’t make it this well. Are you a wizard?”
“No,” he said, faintly smiling. There was a tilt of pride to it; her heart clenched briefly. It was impossible to avoid the foolishness of this game they were dancing through, their crude lack of skill and the way they twirled, blindfolded. And something about him, about his smile and the way he still smelled of flour and fire, made her want to play that game—made her crave the thrill of it, the thought of making fate itself bow at their feet, pressing skin to stone.
Oh, she thought distantly. This is a problem.
He was still speaking. “I learned to make it a long time ago. I didn’t know if it would come out well, since I’m out of practice.”
“It did,” she assured him, ducking her head to take another bite and hide her expression. “Why now?”
Kiran turned away, lifting his shoulders in a loose shrug. But it was practiced, and she read through it—read through him—with a simple fluency that left a cloying taste on her tongue. “I suppose I was a little homesick. It doesn’t happen often.” The words were a little strained, and in a flippant, contrived tone, he added, “And now I have all these extra sweets, and nowhere to put them. It’s not like we’ll be able to finish them ourselves.”
“You severely underestimate my abilities,” she said, halfway through her third sweet. He might as well have been the god of sweets, of sugar and milk. But it seemed too mild for him; she figured that golden eyes borne of honey shone different than ones borne of fire. “And this is only two plates.”
He pressed his lips together, eyes dancing with suppressed laughter. “There’s five containers in the kitchen. Each.”
Suri gaped at him. “How long have you been making these?”
“All night,” he said, bringing up a hand to rub at the back of his neck. He was staring at the sweet he still held in his hand, golden and round, teeth marks marring the smooth surface just slightly. “And all day. You shouldn’t go in the kitchen for the time being.”
While she had been sleeping off her regret, he had been cooking it away. She snagged another sweet from the table and popped it in her mouth. After chewing, she said, “We can take some over to my grandmother tomorrow, she can give them to her clients.”
Kiran glanced doubtfully at the kitchen, as if thinking of the stacked containers, but simply inclined his head in assent.
Her phone buzzed in her jacket and she slid it out, tilting the screen surreptitiously so he couldn’t see it. Miya had texted: u won’t believe what just happened to me.
Three dots danced on the screen, spoke of message after message of righteous anger. Kiran was watching her, brows raised. “Miya?”
She exhaled a laugh. “Yeah, Miya. I’ll be in my room. Do you want these?”
“It’s fine,” he said, shaking his head. He was nearly expressionless, save for a shade of a grin. “You can have them all. I don’t actually like sweets that much.”
“Blasphemy,” she said, unable to fight the accompanying gasp. She slipped her phone back into her pocket and gathered the plates in her arms, unsteady under the weight.
The sight made him laugh, a sweet, carrying sound she kept with her even as she left the room, even as she shut her bedroom door behind her and leaned back against it. She felt nearly content, hearing that laugh, felt like she could wrap herself around it and fall asleep for years, decades, centuries. Like it was a home, or they could make it one.
Suri lay back on her bed and dialed Miya’s number. She picked up immediately.
19
Enesmat
Viro put his hand on his heart and counted the beats of it. One, two, one, two, one, two—a wordless promise of life, an assurance he was different, somehow, than the bodies on the floor.
He could not see them fully; the door of the cabinet was crooked just slightly open, only enough for him to breathe. But the air of the library was just as stale as the air inside the cupboard, perfumed with blood and soiled steel.
From this vantage point, he could only see shreds of death—blood streaked across rapidly paling skin, the ripped cloth surrounding an entry wound. And yet he could hear it all; could feel it all. In the distance, people cried out in pain and death came alive, turned to something agile and vengeful.
Stay here, Radha had said, tucking him into the cupboard as if he were still a small child, easily held in her hands. She was only four years older, and yet she had looked so brave, so aged, even as her hands shook on his shoulders. I must go find Mother and Father, but you have to stay here. You cannot make a sound.
Like the game, he had said. The soldiers had been few and far between then, the screams of pain easily equated to squeals of joy. He had not understood; now he did, but it was too late.
But she ha
d smiled down at him, stretched with the attempt to calm him. Yes, like the game. You must hide and stay quiet, so no one finds you. Promise me you will.
Okay, he had said. I promise.
That had been the last time he had seen her.
He could not know how much time had passed; at some point, the fear had dulled into a buzzing, painful numbness. Hours, perhaps. Days. Time was something fluid and anarchic and useless in the midst of this blood-drenched nightmare.
Finally, the screaming ceased. It did not happen all at once—it was gradual, shouts fading out to soft gasps of pain that fell away to a strained, eerie silence.
Viro knew something was wrong, even as he slowly, quietly shut the door of the cupboard behind him. A sense of injustice, of fundamental error that went further than the bodies on the floor, the blood on the walls. This was something fate-slick and bitter, and he felt it soul-deep.
The halls of the palace were silent, drowned in death. The numbness had not left him; it dragged along behind him with every step, wrapping him further and further into that eerie sense of detachment, grief and apathy walking side by side.
Are they all dead? he thought as he passed another body on the west colonnade. The man lay against the stone crookedly, face pushed into the floor of the corridor but body twisted sickeningly to the right. It was the first dead body Viro had ever seen, the first one he’d fully looked at—he had been too afraid to meet the eyes of the ones in the library, to look into their glassy, distant gazes. It was less that he was afraid of death, and more that he was afraid of what he would see—regret and spite and sorrow. I wanted to live one day longer. Why couldn’t I live one day longer? Why is it you, and not me?
It was a question he could not answer. His birthright gave him nothing; his heart still beat the same way all of theirs had before life had been wrenched from them. And yet, he was alive.
In a strange way, the attack did not surprise him. The rage, the sadness, the fear—that had all been cleanly washed away by the numbness. All that remained was a pensive dispassion, an oddly clear view of the world around him. And it lent him a certain distance, a clarity of mind that allowed him to remember the previous day, if in flashes.
He recalled Kiran tugging him and Tarak to the war room, tears streaming down his cheeks. He had been shouting for them to hurry, his grip bruising Viro’s wrist. He remembered his own surprise, his dismay. Kiran had never shouted before. He had never cried.
And then he had banged on the wooden door until it swung open. The mild irritation on the captain’s face had dissipated into something that resembled unease. As if he too could not help but wonder what had reduced Kiran to tears.
A voice had sounded from inside—What is it?—and the captain had stepped aside, the high priestess appearing beside him. She had crouched beside Kiran, eyes shining with concern as she wiped the tears from his face. But though he had let go of his and Tarak’s wrists, he had not answered her questions, opting to pull himself from her embrace—roughly, as if the gesture pained him—and then moving toward the table, to the chair at the head of it.
He had tilted his chin up, defiant despite his tears, full of an unfamiliar, trembling fire. You have to keep the troops here.
The king had looked at him with familiar bemusement. It was difficult to truly, honestly believe a child knew of things he had never heard, knew of things that had not yet happened. But Viro and Tarak had grown up with his eerily accurate prophecies—most had not.
And then the king had smiled, warm but disbelieving. We need the troops at the borderlands. There has been an attack.
I know, Kiran had replied, still impossibly afraid. But you cannot move them. You must believe me.
The high priestess had crossed the room and bent to put a hand on his shoulder. What is it that you saw?
Kiran had shuddered, a ragged, ghastly tremor running through his entire body. Like the shadow of it still lingered in his bones, a nightmare given form and intent. Eyes black as night, black as rot, he had looked up. Please. You must believe me.
His father had simply shook his head. To keep the troops here is to condemn those of the borderlands. It is not as if our lives matter more or less than theirs, especially when we do not face such a threat. Why should the troops stay here if they may aid them, protect their lives?
But the words had fallen on deaf ears. Logic was of little consequence to someone who played with fate, to someone who had been born from fire. He had seen something, Viro knew, and he could not let it happen. For the first time since he had been brought to the palace, Kiran had fallen to his knees, pressing his face into the floor in full supplication. The words muffled by the stone, he had pleaded. Please. Please.
But his father had only smiled again, as if amused. I do not know what you saw, but it does not have to come true.
Kiran had pulled back, face smudged from dust on the floor. It doesn’t?
He had shaken his head. It doesn’t. And then he had knelt beside Kiran, impossibly warm, and held out his hand. I will not let it pass. I give you my word.
And yet it had passed, Viro knew. Looking around the palace now, shattered in some fundamental, irreversible way, he knew in his bones that this was what Kiran had seen. He could not know what part of it—the silence, or the blood, or the bodies—but he thought, more than any of those things, he had felt this same sense of wrongness; of a crooked bone, a festering wound.
Viro ducked into a shadowed archway, pressing his fingers to his face in shock as he entered the foyer. It was not only the smell—hot blood and bile—that struck him, but the artless carnage of it. The strewn corpses, the discarded weapons still hooked with entrails. Nausea seared through him, sudden and lasting, and he had to clench his teeth to keep from vomiting. The sound would give him away.
He carefully stepped over the eviscerated bodies, taking care to avoid touching the blood with his bare feet. It would leave footprints, signs of life. A soft creaking sounded, and he looked up, found the door to the throne room cracked open slightly, as if by the wind. Light streamed out of it, dull and watery—life, he thought, and in a spark of true, hopeful anticipation, he opened it fully and ducked into the room.
Viro’s heart beat once, and then paused. It hung in the cavern of his chest, silent, and he could feel his blood still in his veins as desolation turned it all to stone.
He could not speak, and he was glad of it; there were no words for this, no gods left to pray to. They had left him, left all of them, abandoned them to this cold, endless darkness.
His parents lay in the center of the throne room. The ariyanai was soaked in red, their bodies strewn over it like trophies. They were intertwined, the king draped loosely over the queen—as if at some point in the now-distant past, he had tried to shield her. It did not matter, of course. They were both dead now, gone to Dhaasthur with the rest.
Radha was crumpled in front of them, another useless shield. She had died on her knees, and had fallen forward in the time since, her wrap torn and stained with blood. She was curled so he could not see her wounds, could only see the eerie shine of her eyes, the stiff tilt of her body.
It was wrong, that she was dead. It was so horribly, irreconcilably wrong. She had put him to bed last night, had sung an old lullaby. That had been her voice, sweet and high and real. She could not simply be dead.
And yet, she was. All death cared for was the act of taking; of dismantling something that had once breathed and shattering it into a corpse.
Distantly, he registered his own movements; he knelt beside Radha’s body, pressed his hand to her heart as he had to his own. But there was no heartbeat, no sound of life, no blood left to lose.
A jagged, mocking laugh sounded in the room. Viro slowly raised his head, shock turning him faded and lethargic. A soldier stood in the doorway. He wore a black leather tunic embroidered with a ring of braided flowers, a crown held within. The symbol of the Najan Army.
Viro held his gaze, but did not remove his hand from her
chest. A cold, remote fire flickered to life in his own, burning through what remained of his heart. It was just blood and ragged flesh at this point, as dead as his sister. The fire consumed the pain, the rage, left nothing behind but ash and smoke.
“Suppose we missed the little runt, did we?” The man said, stepping forward. There was a wickedly sharp sword in his hand, already blood red from the lives that had been lost. The sharp, cruel slant of his mouth told him the man did not mourn for those lives—that they were simply numbers on a list, a statistic in progress.
Viro watched him approach, already detached from the thought of his own death. He was thrown into the recesses of another memory, of another day in eternal winter. This man, with his black shining leather and lethal sword, reminded him of the snake. Slow and uncaring and drowned in malice.
The man raised the sword, and just like the snake, he never had the opportunity to bring it down. Instead, he fell to his knees, lips parted faintly in shock. Before he fell, Viro noticed the tip of something red-swathed and glittering emerge from his chest and disappear.
Behind him, Tarak stood, a knife clutched in his clenched, shaking hands, ashen with shock. The sight of him knocked Viro out of his reverie somewhat, brought him closer to his body. He pulled himself to his feet and walked toward him, but Tarak did not look up, gaze fixed on the dead body of the soldier. His eyes were so wide, so bright.
“I killed him,” he whispered, voice cracked and barely audible. “It is not that I—I did not mean to. I-It was only that he meant to hurt you. He meant to kill you, and I could not let him, I couldn’t, and now he’s—”
He cut off, dropped the knife. It hit the marble point down, cracking the stone. Tarak made a strangled, choked noise, of terror—of disgust—and looked up at Viro as if in a plea. “I did not mean to—I just… he would have killed you. I could not let him kill you.”